NFL Reporter Tried to Use Her Famous Contacts to Avoid a Traffic Ticket

A police body-camera video shows Dianna Russini, a well-known NFL reporter, trying to impress a New Jersey police officer with her famous football contacts after being pulled over for using her phone while driving. The stop happened on January 19 in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Instead of getting a ticket, Russini walked away with just a warning. The video raises questions about whether she used her access to NFL coaches for personal gain.

In the video, the officer asks Russini what team she follows. She asks him the same question, and he says he is a Minnesota Vikings fan. Russini then grabs her phone and appears to show the officer a text message exchange. She asks him, 'Can you see the name?' The officer responds with surprise, recognizing 'K.O.C.' — a nickname for Kevin O'Connell, the head coach of the Vikings.

At the end of the stop, the officer let Russini off with a warning. 'Listen, I'm going to cut you a break on the cellphone,' he told her. He said he understood her job required her to be on the phone often, and asked her to wait until she got home. He also asked her to keep him updated on whether the Vikings would find a new quarterback.

Russini also told a different version of this story in February on a radio show and podcast called 'Stugotz and Company.' In that version, she said she actually called an NFL head coach on FaceTime during the traffic stop. She said the coach told the officer, 'You should let her go, she's a good citizen.' It is not clear if these two stories are about the same traffic stop, and Russini did not respond when reporters asked her about it.

On the same podcast, Russini said she had been pulled over twice in one month, both times with her children in the car. She said the first time, the officer felt sorry for her because one of her sons was crying. The second time was the day NFL coach Sean McDermott was fired from the Buffalo Bills, and Russini said she had been on the phone reporting that news when she was pulled over.

In the body-camera video, Russini also told the officer she had just been on the phone with Brian Daboll, a former NFL head coach, and said he wanted McDermott's old job. Sharing details about a private conversation with a source during a traffic stop raised further questions about her behavior as a journalist.

Media ethics expert Kelly McBride said the situation was deeply concerning. McBride is the chair of the Newmark Center for Ethics at the Poynter Institute, a well-respected school for journalists. She said that if Russini called a coach to help her avoid a ticket, that would be an abuse of her access. She also said that if the podcast story and the video are about the same stop, Russini appears to have made the story bigger than it really was — which is a serious problem for a journalist.

Russini worked as the top NFL reporter for The Athletic, a sports news website owned by The New York Times Company. She earned a salary of nearly $800,000 a year, making her one of the highest-paid reporters at the company. The Athletic began investigating her work in April after photos of her with New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel were published. A spokeswoman for the Times Company said that investigation is still ongoing.